A Measurement of Selected Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Petroleum Product Contaminated Soils Using a Gas Chromatograph

Abstract

Oil contaminated soils around refined petroleum products depot and retailing stations were investigated for selected polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) to determine their levels in the soils. Soil samples were collected using standard analytical procedures and the petroleum hydrocarbons extracted using standard method, while the PAHs (benzo[a]pyrene, benz[a]anthracene, chrysene, benzo[b]fluoranthene, and anthracene) contents of the extracted petroleum hydrocarbons were determined using SNR 8126 gas chromatograph equipped with a flame ionization detector (FID). The results indicated that benz[a]anthracene has the highest concentrations in both the oil depot contaminated soils (59.1 ± 3.3 mg/kg) and oil retailing station contaminated soils (20.8 ± 2.1 mg/kg). The results also showed that the oil depot contaminated soils were burdened with the analyzed PAHs than oil retailing station contaminated soils; this was confirmed by the results of t test analysis. Comparison of the values of the PAHs in the oil impacted soils with their background levels showed that their values in the two sets of oil impacted soils were excessive; this was corroborated with their high pollution (PI) and geoaccumulation (I geo ) index values, except chrysene, which moderately polluted the soils (low PI and I geo values); this was clear indication of indiscriminate discharge of petroleum fuels and petrochemicals into the soils.

Innovative Techniques for Measuring the Oil Content of Oil‐Contaminated Porous Media

“…Quantitative analysis of petroleum hydrocarbon in porous media mainly includes gravimetric (Adeniji et al. ), infrared (Manucharova et al ), ultraviolet reflection (Mathew ), fluorescence (Yang et al ), and turbidity (Fujita et al ) methods and gas chromatographic techniques (Adebiyi et al ). Nowadays, Extraction‐ultraviolet spectroscopy is a widely used method for the analysis of petroleum in porous media (Zheng et al ) and it was chosen as a representative method for this study.…”

Oil Spill Source Identification Using Colorimetric Detection

“…[2,3] The relative amounts of PAHs can be determined through various chromatographic techniques, such as gas chromatography (GC). [4][5][6] Although highly effective, GC is not portable and requires hazardous hydrogen and expensive helium gases. Therefore, spectroscopic determination provides the opportunity to revolutionise this methodology, especially as light sources and sensors are becoming smaller and more powerful.…”

Conductometric Sensor for PAH Detection with Molecularly Imprinted Polymer as Recognition Layer

“…Existing techniques for detecting PAHs rely on bulky instruments which require sample preparation, its isolation and large volume of organic solvents that make these methods very time consuming and costly. There are some reports about coupling selective extractions with instrumental analysis to detect PAHs [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Trace analytical methods for complex matrices rely on efficient sample enrichment and selective assays.…”